Kevin Pietersen has re-signed for the Delhi Daredevils as he continues to plan for life after England.

Pietersen is free for the first time to feature in a full Indian Premier League campaign, following his axing as a contracted England player at the age of 33 which has effectively signalled the end of his international career.

The IPL announced on its official Twitter feed that Pietersen would play for the Daredevils in the 2014 season. The team were reported to have agreed to pay US$1.5m (£900,000) for Pietersen.

The ‘Right to Match’ system has been introduced to this year’s IPL as a means for teams to buy back up to five of their core players from previous campaigns.

The Daredevils announced last month that they had opted not to retain any of their players. Since then, however, Pietersen has become available to play a full IPL campaign following the cancellation of his central contract and they opted to match the bid made by rivals Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Pietersen was last week left out of the England squads to tour the Caribbean and for the ICC World Twenty20 in Bangladesh.

The decision to effectively retire England’s leading runscorer across all formats has been widely criticised. Both sides in the dispute have been bound by a confidentiality agreement, but the England and Wales Cricket Board did say in a statement released on Sunday that Pietersen’s removal from the team stemmed from a lack of trust.

The IPL season begins in April. As well as previously playing for the Daredevils, Pietersen has also featured in the IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The Daredevils actually spent more to recruit wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik, with his fee reported to be 125m Indian rupees (just over £1.2m). The team also confirmed on their website that they had signed Indian opening batsman Murali Vijay.

The Sunrisers went in for another explosive batsman after missing out on Pietersen, signing Australian David Warner for 55m rupees (around £530,000) while England’s Ashes nemesis Mitchell Johnson signed for Kings XI Punjab for 65m rupees (over £630,000).

Pietersen’s fee, around £880,000, was lower than some estimates made prior to the auction, with former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi telling the BBC last week that he thought the player could attract a record bid in the region of US$3m US dollars, which equates to over £1.8m.

Pietersen was unable to feature at all for Delhi last year because of a knee injury which kept him out of all cricket for three months.